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Grex > Coop10 > #79: Budget Planning Meeting, Sunday 2/8 at 2:30pm | |
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valerie
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Budget Planning Meeting, Sunday 2/8 at 2:30pm
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Feb 3 15:20 UTC 1998 |
This item has been erased.
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| 78 responses total. |
valerie
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response 1 of 78:
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Feb 3 15:21 UTC 1998 |
This response has been erased.
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valerie
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response 2 of 78:
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Feb 3 15:25 UTC 1998 |
This response has been erased.
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janc
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response 3 of 78:
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Feb 3 15:52 UTC 1998 |
Sadly, there are some hardware purchases we need to think about:
- A mail machine. Doesn't have to be much of a machine. It's main
function would be to smooth out the load as far as mail delivery to
Grex goes. Mail tends to arrive in bursts that can slow Grex to
a crawl. A mail machine would handle the bursts, and feed things
on to Grex at a more steady rate.
- Spare parts for the 670. We need another motherboard and cpu card
as spare parts for the 670. 670 motherboards are moderately hard
to find, so that isn't something we'd want to be looking for in a
big hurry. I don't know what the prices on these look like.
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other
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response 4 of 78:
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Feb 3 22:33 UTC 1998 |
will it be possible for someone to bring an assessment of grex's power
consumption to the meeting? it would help with the budget planning...
perhaps also an estimate of consumption changes on the 670...
i said somewhere else, but since i don't remember where, i'll repeat: the
classified ads in the AA News now regularly show 486 boxes for sale for
various prices. we could bring some of those ads to assess likely cost of
a mail machine.
is there a pumkin rent increase likely/possible anytime soon?
how about telcom rate changes based on currently pending effects of
deregulation?
what particular value is centrex to us, and can we get trunk hunt service
without it, say on another local carrier, should aforementioned changes
necessitate it, or make it worth considering?
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dpc
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response 5 of 78:
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Feb 4 01:57 UTC 1998 |
I'd like to come to the meeting, but can't be sure yet. I had no idea
you and Jan lived behind 402 West Liberty, where some lawyer buddies
of mine hang out!
Also--do you have the whole house at 406 West Liberty, or should we
look for a particular apartment?
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arthurp
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response 6 of 78:
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Feb 4 03:03 UTC 1998 |
I have most of a 486 to donate. I don't know if I have any RAM for the
system. I don't have a network card for it. I don't have a case or
hard drives. The rest I have.
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aruba
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response 7 of 78:
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Feb 4 05:10 UTC 1998 |
OK, I'm about to enter a response with a lot of numbers in it, so try not to
let your eyes glaze over. I have totalled our income from 1997 and what our
expected expenses are in 1998 to get a figure for how much surplus we have
to play with.
After going over numerous phone bills and trying out things on the spread
sheet to find out what gets taxed and what doesn't, I think I have an accurate
model for how much we pay in overhead ($20/month), how much per line ($18.74),
and how much our ISDN lines cost ($118.11).
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aruba
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response 8 of 78:
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Feb 4 05:15 UTC 1998 |
1997 Credits, not including fund drives:
---------------------------------------
Membership Dues $6,405.00
Auction Proceeds $1,414.10
Miscellaneous Donations $783.06
Profit from promotional items $240.60
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$8,842.76 = $736.90 per month
Expected monthly expenses for 1998:
----------------------------------
Monthly Yearly
------- ------
Rent $60.00 $720.00
Electricity $83.00 $996.00
Centrex overhead $20.00 $240.00
13 dial-in lines @ $18.74 each $243.62 $2,923.44
ISDN lines $118.11 $1,417.32
ICNET phone lines $38.74 $464.88
Staff line $18.74 $224.88
Bank Service Charge (est.) $5.84 $70.02
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$588.05 $7,056.54
One-time 1998 costs already spent:
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Centrex Installation * $73.76
Renewal of cyberspace.org $50.00
Ethernet hub $71.37
P.O. Box renewal $40.00
New disk $216.63
Backup tapes $36.09
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$487.85
* We've been paying off our Centrex installation for the past year,
and we're finally done (yay!)
So, if everything goes as planned, and we take in as much as we did last
year (and keep the same monthly expenses), we'll have a surplus of
$8,842.76
-$7,056.54
-$487.85
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$1,298.37
So the meeting, I hope, will focus on what to do with it, and perhaps on ways
we can either increase our income or decrease our expenses, so that we have
more left over for improvements to Grex.
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aruba
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response 9 of 78:
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Feb 4 05:17 UTC 1998 |
Keep in mind that we can also hold fundraisers to help pay for improvements,
but I think we'd better get the new computer running before we try that.
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aruba
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response 10 of 78:
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Feb 4 09:43 UTC 1998 |
Is there any data available on how often all 13 dial-in lines are in use?
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scott
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response 11 of 78:
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Feb 4 12:14 UTC 1998 |
Not to the degree that we had before went moved the modems to the terminal
server. However, before that we had full line use for a few minutes every
day. Terminal server stats we have now indicate that all 13 lines do get
used, but not much beyond that unless we start rebooting the terminal server
every day.
An issue with line stats, though, is that a number of users still dial
761-5041 out of habit, making it seem like there is more use of certain lines
that there might be otherwise. We could move 761-5041 to 2nd line in the
trunk hunt to get around that.
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aruba
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response 12 of 78:
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Feb 4 20:48 UTC 1998 |
I think we ought to at least consider the possibility of dropping a line or
two to save money, so it would be good to know what effect that would have on
dialers-in (i.e., how many more people would have to wait for a connection,
and how long would they have to wait?) If a line costs $18.74 per month and
$42 to turn on, we save money by turning it off for 2 months and 8 days or
more.
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scg
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response 13 of 78:
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Feb 5 01:24 UTC 1998 |
I've also noticed that many of the people who use the dial-ins also have ISP
accounts. Since dial-ins cost Grex a lot more than users who telnet in do,
we should really be encouraging anybody who can to telnet in rather than
dialing in.
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scott
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response 14 of 78:
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Feb 5 12:00 UTC 1998 |
I *don't* telnet in at certain times, because I know there will be a long
telnet queue wait but modems will be available.
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remmers
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response 15 of 78:
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Feb 5 12:12 UTC 1998 |
Telnet costs Grex a lot less than dialins, but that is at least
partly because we offer a bargain-basement telnet service that is
often cumbersome to use.
I have the option of either dialing or telnetting. Other things
being equal, I would prefer to telnet because then I can do other
online activities like reading my email and web browsing at the
same time I'm Grexing. The problem is that other things aren't
equal: When I telnet, I often have to wait in the queue, and when
I do get on, response time is generally slower than with direct
dialing. The ISDN line has helped a lot with response time, but
direct dialing remains significantly better.
These considerations usually tip the balance for me in favor of
direct dialing, as I imagine they do for other people who have a
choice. I don't think people are going to voluntarily choose
telnetting until long queue waits become rare and the response
times get better. Achieving that would cost money and make
telnetting more expensive for Grex to support.
Given the downsides to telnetting, how do we encourage it without
incurring additional expense?
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remmers
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response 16 of 78:
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Feb 5 12:13 UTC 1998 |
(Scott slipped in and made the same point I did in a lot
fewer words... :-)
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albaugh
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response 17 of 78:
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Feb 5 17:15 UTC 1998 |
I'd opine that many dial-inners don't have other 'net access, so they're
coming to grex to party and maybe bbs. Cutting down dial-in lines would
therefore reduce the number of people doing grex-inherent things.
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dpc
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response 18 of 78:
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Feb 5 18:30 UTC 1998 |
I've looked at the figures Mark posted in #8 and I have a slightly
different take on our financial outlook. I think we will be lucky
to break even in 1998.
Mark says our monthly expenses are $588.05, and so a year's
worth of monthly expenses is $7,056.54. He says our one-time costs
for 1998, already spent, are $487.85. He then deducts $7,056.54
and $487.85 from our 1997 income (which he assumes will stay the same
in 1998), and comes up with a surplus of $1,298.37.
But his scenario assumes that we will have no other "one-time
costs" in 1998. That is bound to be incorrect. For example, we
will certainly have one-time costs of setting up the 670, plus maybe
the suggested new mail machine.
That $487.85 in one-time costs was entirely spent in one month:
January. Just suppose for the sake of argument that we have $487.85
in one-time costs during each of the remaining 11 months in 1998.
Then we would have an extra 11 x $487.85 = $5,336.35 in one-time
costs, transforming that $1,298.37 surplus into a loss of
$5,336.35 - $1,298.37 = $4,067.98.
Now of course we're not going to have nearly $500 of one-time
costs in each month. However, it does seem reasonable to me to
assume that we're probably going to have at least $100 in one-time
costs each month. That would mean that we would only have a surplus
for 1998 of $1,298.37 - (11 x $100.00) = $198.37. Practically zero.
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krj
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response 19 of 78:
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Feb 5 18:58 UTC 1998 |
Unfortunately, the way to encourage direct-dial users to migrate to telnet
is to make direct-dial less and less convenient by reducing the number
of dial-in lines.
I use both telnet and direct-dial, depending on where I am (East Lansing
or Ann Arbor) and the time of day. One has to have a lot of patience or
a lot of dedication to wait in the telnet queue between about 11pm
and maybe 6-8 am. <krj feels an urge to climb onto an old hobby-horse...>
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jep
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response 20 of 78:
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Feb 5 19:49 UTC 1998 |
I use backtalk exclusively. It's that or telnet for me, since I live
outside the local calling area, and since I don't have a modem at work.
I've come to really prefer backtalk. There's no waiting in a queue,
though I suppose that's compensated for by lags when downloading new
items or entering commands. There are limitations, too, such as
no e-mail (unless you log in or forward your mail to someplace
where you have POP mail), no party, etc. Anyway, I just wanted to point
out there is a 3rd connection option for conferencing.
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remmers
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response 21 of 78:
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Feb 5 21:16 UTC 1998 |
If the direct-dial lines are underutilized, it might make sense
to reduce their number. But I'd hope that any resulting savings
would be plowed into improving telnet connectivity. Otherwise,
there's the danger that instead of encouraging migration to
telnet, we'd be encouraging migration away from grex.
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aruba
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response 22 of 78:
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Feb 5 23:36 UTC 1998 |
Dave, I certainly didn't assume that there would be no more one-time costs -
The main point of the budget meeting, I think, is to decide what to do with
that $1300 which we expect to take in but haven't allocated yet. In other
words, to decide what one-time expenses we should commit to.
(But thanks for reading my response - I get the feeling you were the only
one. :))
All this anecdotal evidence about modem use is nice, but we need hard
statistics before we decide to cut back on a line or to.
Maybe it would help to see a list of the one-time expenses we incurred over
the last year or two - that might help people to come up with ideas for what
we should do in '98.
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danr
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response 23 of 78:
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Feb 6 00:28 UTC 1998 |
I think the $1300 should go towards saving Social Security.
Seriously, though, don't get hung up on what to do with the surplus.
$1300 will go for something. As this is a planning meeting, I'd
try to plan how to raise more money, as Valerie has already suggested.
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aruba
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response 24 of 78:
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Feb 6 02:09 UTC 1998 |
Well, being as this is a "Plan the *budget*" meeting, I think we ought to
decide what we want to do with that money, or at least decide what our
spending priorities are for the year. It may turn out that we can live
comfortably on that $1300, or we may decide we need more, but we should
decide one way or another.
I've been growing steadily more uncomfortable with allocating hundreds of
dollars at a time for hardware purchases, without any strategy for making
sure we get the most important things first and don't bankrupt ourselves
by trying to get everything. From the beginning to the end of 1997 the
general fund dropped by $717.92. $423.20 of that went into stock for the
Grex store, but the rest (almost $300) is money that we overspent. This
year we expect to have less money to spend, so I'm worried that if we
don't plan things out we will spend ourselves into an even deeper hole.
Now I don't know jack about our hardware needs, and I'm happy to depend on
staff to make recommendations for what we should get. But I wouldn't be
doing my job as treasurer if I didn't point out that if we don't get
organized, we have the potential to end up in a real mess.
I asked for this budget meeting so we can set some priorities. If we want
to spend a portion of it brainstorming about how to get more money, that's
fine - but I hope we can make some concrete decisions about what to do
with it, too.
-------
With that in mind, here is what we spent general fund money on in 1997,
over and above our normal operating expenses:
Item Amount paid from general fund
---- -----------------------------
Centrex Installation (11/12 of it) $806.04
ISDN Installation $634.00
ISDN Routers (with $795.00 from fund drive) $355.93
SIMMs for the new computer $248.00
New Computer (with $1,387.80 from fund drive) $81.80
X-10 CP290 Computer Interface $40.98
Renewal of P.O. Box $40.00
Advertising $37.50
Backup Tapes $28.29
Reservation of Shelter for Grex B-Day Party $24.00
grex.org domain name (with $80 from fund drive) $20.00
Renewal of assumed name "Grex" w/ State of Mich. $10.00
Corporation Info Update to State of Mich. $10.00
(I'm afraid I don't remember what an "X-10 CP290 Computer Interface" is,
but that's what it says on the receipt scott gave me. Scott, do you
remember?)
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